


Safewords and Coffee

by bookstorequeer



Series: Safewords and Coffee [2]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angsty Schmoop, Drunk Sex, M/M, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Safewords, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-14 17:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookstorequeer/pseuds/bookstorequeer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They fall together easily enough. He likes waking up too warm but unwilling to shove any body away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some references to previous sexual trauma (fairly vague in future parts) - i.e. Jensen has some issues.
> 
> This is a continuation of a Roque/Cougar/Jensen pairing written for a prompt. I started wondering how this would have affected Roque's actions during the movie. Would he have still done what he did? This is me working through that.

It was never supposed to turn out like this. He isn’t the one to have someone in every port, to fuck anything that stands still long enough, or to actively chase it down, like Clay or Cougar. He’s supposed to be the level-headed, if violent, second-in-command to Clay’s horny leader. But none of that meshes in any way with waking up to a body behind him on the bed, another in his arms, and tequila stale in the back of his throat. That the bodies are men might bother him later, but he’s gone that route before. That they’re the team’s hacker and the team’s sniper is something of much bigger impact because you don't fuck with the team.  
  
Shutting his eyes and trying not to groan aloud, Roque sets about attempting to extricate himself. He’s in the process of unwinding his arms from Jensen when the man behind him bites at his ear.  
  
“Don’t,” is the sotto growl and he freezes. Cougar bites him again. ”Don’t pull away from him.”  
  
He struggles with the urge to run and also with knowing that Cougar knows the hacker better than he does, so if anyone knows what not to do where Jensen is concerned, it’s Cougar. That these are  _his_  men as well as Clay’s is something warm in his chest and difficult to face.  
  
“‘M ‘wake,” is the mumble against his chest and he shivers when Jensen’s scruff scrapes against his nipple.  
  
Roque swallows and blinks down at the hacker in his arms. “Jensen, I...”  
  
“Yeah, I get it,” the hacker is saying, through a scramble across the room for underwear and strewn clothing. “Never again. You’ll gut me if I- if we mention it. Transfer to a new unit, ASAP. I know.”  
  
He’s wordless and motionless with surprise as Cougar curses in Spanish and climbs over him in pursuit. With his own muttered expletives, Roque gets to his feet and clambers after -- he’s only got flashes so far from last night but it’s enough to remember the taste of Jensen’s mouth and the way Cougar’s gun callouses feel on his dick. What he wants, more than to avoid ever talking about this again, is to push the hacker to his knees and to count Cougar’s scars with his tongue.  
  
He tells himself, standing outside the room the other two are sharing and shamelessly listening in, that this isn’t about how wide and blue Jensen’s eyes can be or how flexible Cougar is. That it isn’t about how he knows that Cougar has nightmares and Jensen has insomnia. It isn’t about how hearing Jensen sound so upset through the door makes his chest tight. It’s not about that because he’s a violent, heartless motherfucker and he is definitely not opening the door with a hip because his hands are full of coffee prepared how he’s seen Cougar and Jensen take them every single morning. Not that he’s noticed.  
  
The hushed whispers of the room stop as the door creaks open.  
  
“Coffee,” he grunts, clearing space on the bed opposite the other two, just to see Jensen flinch at the crash of electronic debris. He hands each mug over separately so that their fingers brush and swallows a leer when Jensen blushes so prettily. He can feel Cougar’s eyes on him and knows that he has to tread carefully or the man will run.  
  
He tunes out Jensen’s babbles about the historical origins of coffee and meets the sniper’s steady gaze. He can see the instant Cougar realises that the coffee in his hand is perfect, down to the sprinkle of cinnamon that no one is supposed to know about. The smile Roque gets is small and mostly hidden behind a wide brim but he returns it and basks a moment in the warmth of having done something right that didn’t involve peeling someone’s flesh off a little at a time.  
  
The room is thick with silence as they sip their daily drug and Roque isn’t subtle about watching Jensen lick cream bubbles from his upper lip. Just when he’s contemplating leaning across the gap between the beds and tasting that mouth Cougar breaks the stillness.  
  
“Jake? Mi amor, look at me.”  
  
That’s when Roque realises the wrongness of Jensen’s stillness, like the quiet before a bomb goes off. The prompted hacker shakes a rumpled blond head and stares down at the coffee gone cold in his hands. Roque can’t hear whatever it is that Cougar’s whispering in Jensen’s ear but he can certainly appreciate the picture of them together and the way that muttered Spanish can unclench broad shoulders without the effort it might have taken him in English.  
  
“So... No transfer?” Jake Jensen’s eyes are impossibly blue when they search his face and Roque shakes his head, rolling his eyes without thinking.  
  
“If you think we want to break in another hacker, you’re fucked in the head.” A grin slips past his resolve. “Cougar’s grown so attached, after all.” He nearly laughs when the sniper bristles but still nods anyway when Jensen look askance. “Besides,” Roque continues, leaning forward and resting a palm that he will  _never_  admit is sweaty on Jensen’s knee, “I can’t remember what your mouth tastes like and I want to.”  
  
He likes the silence that gets him and takes the opportunity to pull Jensen within reach. There’s a surprised gasp against his tongue and his cock hardens in his jeans. He isn’t about to admit that he shudders when strong sniper fingers press at his crotch but Cougar’s smirk when he pulls away from Jensen tells him that there’s little use denying it. Not that there’s anything to deny.  
  
“We doing this?” he asks, for the sake of not fucking things up with  _his_  team -- they’re as good as his team when sometimes he’s all that stands between them and plans skewed by Clay’s revenge, Clay’s dick, or both.  
  
Jensen nods against his collarbone and slides an arm around his waist. He can’t quite resist the instinct to press a kiss to a nerves-dampened temple but doesn’t say a word when the hand around his back clutches at him. Cougar looks at him for long enough that he’s counting down to the refusal and mentally writing his own transfer. In the end he gets another shy smile and learns that the feel of whiskers against his skin is just as hot as anything anyone’s tried before.  
  
“Sí. Caúselo.”  _(Bring it on)_  
  
“I plan on it,” Roque leers, already wondering just what it will take to get Cougar babbling for him.


	2. Chapter 2

They fall together easily enough. He learns that Cougar’s ticklish behind his knees but that he’ll come if you bite there hard enough; that Jensen sucks cock like he was born to it; and that  _he_  likes being in between the two of them. The focus they unleash on his body —because Jensen stills for sex like he does for little else aside from his niece or violence— is heady and he likes how soft Cougar’s eyes get when he relaxes for them. He likes waking up too warm but unwilling to shove any body away. He likes Clay’s confused look when he starts cleaning his nails with a knife, after the first time.  
  
When it first happens, they’re in the middle of bumfuck who-the-hell-cares-where, waiting for their extraction and still riding the adrenaline high of minor injuries that, for once, even Jolene would consider minor. He’s been hard since he saw the mark go down in yet another impossible shot from Cougar and Jensen isn’t helping by insisting that he needs fresh air on the scrapes across his upper back from tumbling out of a moving van. It was all part of the dumb-ass plan but Roque still wants to punish the hacker for stupid risks. His temper’s fraying the higher temperature rises and the longer his dick goes unsucked—that’s probably why he finds himself whipping a knife at the happily babbling hacker without thinking. It digs a quarter of the way into the log at Jensen’s feet before stopping.  
  
“Shut the fuck up!” he snarls, pulse throbbing in his head and in his pants.  
  
Jensen freezes and turns to him with wide eyes. He watches an involuntary shudder go through the blond and for a second he’s worried that he’s fucked all this beyond what an apology will fix. Then Jensen’s tackling him, forcing him to wrestle for air as Pooch lays bets with Clay. He goes stiff with surprise, face pressing to the rich earth, when Jensen’s hard against his ass.  
  
“Let him up, amor,” Cougar says lowly, voice a growl as it crawls over his skin.  
  
“Goin’ ta fuck ya,” Jake promises in his ear before climbing off and Roque ignores the fact that he’s unsteady when he reaches for Cougar’s hand up. He refuses to be caught off-guard by Jensen’s lust and Cougar’s uncommon impatience for the chance to touch him.  
  
That insatiable, unassailable lust has nothing to do with why he starts using larger and larger knives to do the little jobs that scissors have done before. His growing knife obsession has nothing to do with Jensen tied spread-eagled on his bed at Bragg, since he’s the only one with a single room, as befits a Captain. He just likes watching those pupils dilate as he runs first the dull and then the sharp edge of his favourite blade over flush-bright skin, likes the sound of Cougar sighing as he watches Roque touch Jensen. Cougar’s hands are tied, there’s an improvised cockring on his dick that the sniper could have taken off if he hadn’t been Roque’s first plaything, and if he’s really good while he watches, Roque might just let him come before dawn breaks.  
  
The second-in-command likes having these men at his mercy, likes knowing that they could probably kill him if they wanted to but they won’t because they like what they do together. He isn’t stupid enough to imagine it’s more than that. He’s seen soft looks and gentle touches between them but felt little himself. The closest he’s come so far is being at the bottom of a dogpile of trembling flesh the night they’d decided that, yes, they do need safewords.  
  
It starts with Jensen, since Roque and Cougar both get off on knowing all the ways it’s possible to quiet a verbose man. Roque’s got the hacker pinned cheek to floor with his dick in that exquisite ass and his hands rough as they hold tight to elbows like wings at Jensen’s back. Cougar’s been biting at smooth, pale skin and dark, scarred flesh like his teeth are sharp and it’s all pushing Roque higher and hotter until he feels Jensen start to shake beneath him. At first he thinks that Jake’s climaxing but when normally nimble fingers start to clench and twitch weakly against his wrists, his thrusts slow. As the slap of skin-on-skin quiets and he pulls out, his stomach turns to hear the tiny whimpers unlike anything he’s heard from Jensen before.  
  
 _“No, no, no, please, no, no.”_  
  
It’s Cougar that clues him in to something being serious wrong. He’s never seen Carlos so pale; the sniper is shaking as they both reach for Jensen. Cougar’s face pinches when Jensen flinches away. Roque taps a firm finger on Jensen’s elbow. He doesn’t want to touch anything else, since the hacker’s curled up to protect his vulnerable pieces. Slowly, deliberately, and with a hand around Cougar’s wrist to keep the sniper from bolting, Roque taps “j-a-k-e” in Morse code on the curve of a funny bone that he knows has been broken before by contact with at least one jerk’s skull. For once he doesn’t get hard at the thought of such nimble violence but that’s probably because red-rimmed eyes are blinking at him and he doesn’t know what to say to the wounded, naked soul in them.  
  
He ends up with, “Hey,” and sliding an arm around still-quivering shoulders. That head tilting ever so slowly to rest on his shoulder makes it easy to pull Cougar close to his other side with another arm around a too-thin waist. The weight of Cougar’s assumed guilt sits heavy in his lungs but he doesn’t know what the man has to brood over when it’s Roque’s fault that Jensen is sitting in the fetal position. The sniper is stiff against his side and he just needs one fucking minute to process how in the hell this went south so quickly. Jensen has caught him off-guard but it’s only ever been in a good way before.  
  
“Hey Jake,” he murmurs against that sweat-clammy head, knowing that if he doesn’t ask now, he never will. And god knows Cougar won’t tell him, if the self-censure in those dark, down-turned eyes is anything to go by. Jensen rolls his head on Roque’s shoulder but it’s not a refusal when the blond starts to talk.  
  
“I don’t– You can’t– Don’t hold me like that.”  
  
Roque nods so quickly he thinks something in his chest might break. If he were any other man, he might have recognized the cracked organ spilling blood into his tired veins.  
  
“It just... brings up bad memories, ok? I don’t want to talk about it.”  
  
“That’s a first,” Roque says softly and feels Cougar huff a silent chuckle against his chilled skin. Jensen just grunts and that’s the silence that unnerves him. “Give us a safeword then, idiot.”  
  
He’s never been one to give whoever he’s fucking an out but right now no one is getting off and Roque knows that this isn’t something he can afford to fuck up. Something he doesn't _want_ to fuck up. Even if he loses this, he’s too close to these men to cause more damage. Jensen’s obviously a very, very special fucking snowflake and Roque will kill whoever cracked the hacker if he ever gets the chance. He has a good feeling that Cougar will help him.  
  
“Wade,” Cougar spits when Jensen fails to say anything.  
  
Roque isn’t sure the tension in either man is a good thing but his cock is still hard and the floor is cold. He’ll give it a shot. They’re Losers—what could possibly go wrong? Later he’ll be mad at himself for thinking with his dick like Clay always does but for now Jensen is relaxing in his arms and Cougar’s digging insistent fingers into the knotted muscles low in his back. For now, Roque is tasting the skin between Jensen’s pecs and grinning at the whimper they get when strong, dexterous hacker’s fingers find sensitive sniper places. For now, Roque is content not to try anything that has required a safeword when he’s tried it before. And if he holds Jensen a little gentler or a little closer, that’s no one’s business but his own. If he sees Cougar doing the same thing, he isn’t going to say anything that might disturb the afterglow that’s making his head heavy on the pillow and his body warm.


	3. Chapter 3

“Wade” will never work as a safeword. Eventually, he learns this but it takes Clay bursting in, gun in hand, and Cougar sitting on the roof naked for a half hour because that’s how long it takes Roque to work out where he’s gone. They’re in the middle of South America and Roque’s had a headache since he first heard Max on the radio. All he wants tonight is to unload just a little of this tension that’s strangling him onto the capable shoulders of his teammates. He definitely doesn’t want to go spider-monkeying up the side of their hotel because Bolivia has never heard of fire escapes and Cougars always head for high ground—or so Jensen tells him from lips smashed into the pillow and a face still wet with emotion.  
  
“Cougar?” he calls just before his head pops over the edge of the roof because, naked or not, he seriously doubts that Cougar is ever unarmed.  
  
There’s no answer but also nothing sharp or heavy thrown at his already-scarred face, so he’ll call it a win. It’s about this time that he realises he’s probably been spending too much time around Jensen, outside of shagging the hacker stupid, since he's starting to talk like him.  
  
Moonlight drowns the rooftop in shadows and Roque hesitates because Cougar has never been a man to sneak up on. If he knows you’re coming, sure, Roque’s seen Jensen sneak a kiss and he might have stolen one or two of his own but this is different. This is something that isn’t in a company file he only skimmed when Clay tossed it to him a lifetime ago, or that Jensen had the breath to tell him in between helpless laughter at Clay’s shocked, horrified, and maybe-just-a-little-turned-on face and the shaking from reaction that Roque’s worried the blond is still doing. Best to gather wayward sniper and return to soothe said hacker. And this time ‘soothing’ has  _got_  to involve picking a better safeword because Roque is getting really sick of not getting off and Jensen’s head is too fucked up to preempt, most of the time.  
  
Eventually, sticky from adrenaline and aborted passion, Roque finds Carlos Alvarez in the far corner of the roof, fingers curled like cougar’s claws. He can’t help the unhappy noise in the back of his throat at seeing the proud, quiet man reduced to this.  
  
“Cougs?” There’s no response but, then, he isn’t sure he really expected one. “Jensen said you’d be up here.”  
  
He settles within reach but without reaching. He has no idea what to say; Cougar isn’t Jensen to be poked into spilling every secret for the betterment of his own mind. Cougar is a self-contained time-bomb just waiting for the right fuse. The stars are fading by the time he hears a sound other than their quiet breathing. He shifts closer when he realises that those hitched breaths aren’t the sounds of a happy man. Cougar is crying.  
  
He doesn’t do much more than twine his fingers with Cougar’s but it’s enough to set his lover off in broken, stilted Spanish that makes Roque wish he knew more of the language, while simultaneously hating what he does understand. He hates the picture it paints about other evil men he has to hunt down because snipers are more than just their guns and sometimes it’s impossible to forget everything seen through a scope.  
  
When Jensen finds them, they’re dozing away the dawn and Roque’s shirt is nearly dried from where it was used to wipe Cougar’s face. The second-in-command likes to think that it was more than just his towel-skills that quieted the sniper; he likes to think that maybe in part it was gentle kisses that don’t have to lead anywhere—which he isn’t sure he’s going to admit to Jensen, much less anyone else—and just having another body, having  _him_  there.  
  
He doesn’t say anything about the breakdown as they get to their feet and he and Jensen try to decide between watching Cougar dress in the clothes Jake brought up, because the sniper is stunning, and looking away for some semblance of privacy. Roque doesn’t say anything when Clay corners him later—except for a growled, “Leave it,  _Colonel_ ” and a dark look—or when Jensen asks him with shadowed blue eyes that already know.  
  
He can still remember how fucking mortifying it had been when Jensen found him not long after the clusterfuck that was their last official, unofficial mission. He had been shitfaced and shaking and unable to forget the smile on Cougar’s face as the sniper had carried that little girl through the motherfucking  _jungle_  and how Jensen just wouldn’t shut up even though the kids couldn’t understand him, because Roque had been listening. Jensen hadn’t said a word upon finding him or when Roque grabbed him and couldn’t keep from crying into yet another loud, obnoxious t-shirt. Those hands had been warm as they soothed down his back and he appreciated the gentle touches, even if he still can’t bring himself to thank Jensen for not saying a thing. He’s never cried over death before and it surprised him to do it now, but he can see how Cougar aches with it and how even Jensen is quieter.  
  
He’s not sure that revenge before they’ve even had the time to heal these wounds is the right thing but Clay isn’t listening and when Roque smells smoke through the thin walls of their motel room, he’s not as surprised as he’d like to be. He knows that Cougar and Jensen are at some damned doll factory party because Jake had haltingly, with beautiful little blushes, tried to invite him to go. It had been difficult to explain why he probably shouldn’t, when all he wanted to do was say yes to make Jensen smile again. Eventually he’d just given in and kissed the blond until Jensen’s brain quieted, before sending the two of them off alone. Roque likes those still moments, when he can shut Jensen up with a kiss, and when he can pretend that he’s not just a third tacked on to a couple, a spicy extra to an already smouldering sex life; when he can pretend between soft kisses and bites that they want him as much as each other.  
  
He knows that Jensen and Cougar are safe, when the hotel burns, so he sprints for Pooch and they’re just in the hallway when Clay’s door opens. Roque’s not surprised to smell the smoke strongest here, or that Clay’s following a woman; he’s just disappointed. A point which he brings up loudly the next day at the cemetery.  
  
She smells of smoke and whiskey, and Roque almost doesn’t care when Clay smells the same. He’s too busy wondering how and when Jensen got one of his niece’s soccer shirts sent to Bolivia of all places and how long it will take before he can kiss the taste of those women from Cougar’s mouth.  
  
The meeting’s a bust so far as Roque is concerned. He doesn’t like this chick and would gladly use his knives on her but Clay seems to think this will work and Roque knows how badly Jensen misses being Stateside. He isn’t about to do anything to fuck that up. Besides, he’s been playing with his favourite knife the entire time and he can feel Cougar’s eyes on him. He has a feeling that tonight will be a good night to pick and hopefully  _not_ use a new safeword.  
  
“Petunia,” someone suggests and Roque’s not sure that it wasn’t him. Jensen looks at him with wide, full eyes and surprises them both by smiling before leaning easily into Roque, his tongue hot, wet, and eager in Roque’s mouth. He likes how warm Jake is against him but Cougar’s still too hesitant, like echoes of ‘Wade’ are sticking to their skin. Roque grins against Jensen’s jaw and feels his cock twitch when the hacker agrees with his whispered suggestion. They pounce on Cougar before the sniper can do much more than open his mouth in surprise.  
  
“Gonna make you scream,” Roque promises, sucking hard on unmarked flesh to feel the heat beneath his lips. He slides down that lithe figure slowly, enjoying the drag of his body against Cougar’s. He steals a languid, hungry kiss from Jensen on the hacker’s way up and can feel Cougar get harder in his hand as the sniper watches. It’s nice to know that sometimes he isn’t the only one who gets off on watching.  
  
Roque glances up as he settles between Cougar’s legs and sees the long line of Carlos’ throat, head thrown back and mouth gaping open, begging for a kiss. Jensen is laving biting kisses across a whisker-shadowed jaw and Roque can feel phantom aches in his own bones from the last time Jake felt like biting.  
  
“Kiss him,” Roque growls, stroking up Cougar’s hard cock when his order is followed. He hums back in his throat as he swallows and Carlos arches into him with a soft cry. He likes the taste and the sound of it, and the way the man beneath him shudders as his fingers scrape over a tiny, hidden hole. He takes the lube Jensen tosses to him and they all jump at how loud the cap is. He might be smirking but his mouth is full.  
  
Cougar groans and curses when Roque slides two well-slicked fingers into him, not stretching, just working the sniper open with steady, insistent pressure. By the time he’s three fingers knuckle-deep inside, Carlos is making almost as much noise as Jensen does, while the hacker chews a mark on that beautiful neck that all the handkerchiefs in the world won’t cover.  
  
In the end, Roque discovers that it only takes the steady pressure of a bent knuckle and Jensen whispering, “ _Come, Carlos_ ,” all hoarse and sexy, for Cougar to lose his vaulted sniper reserve and dirty himself just the way Roque likes best. He holds the other man down against too-sensitive flinches as he laps up the spilt come striping across that tight stomach. He does it because he likes the way that the man’s skin tastes through the salt and spice on his tongue, and the way Jensen can never resist plundering his mouth for the faintest hint of Cougar. He sighs appreciatively and lets the 6’ hacker bear him to the mattress.  
  
“Gonna taste ya,” Jensen grits out and Roque shakes his head when he can feel that hard cock sticky against his skin.  
  
“No,” he moans, “F-fuck me. It’ll make the plane ride more interesting.”  
  
The light in those blue eyes dazzles him; he looks away to fight down the emotions like jagged edges in his guts and is caught off guard by the intensity of the look Cougar is giving him. It’s like somehow they’ve seen through him already, seen past the posturing and the heartlessness to realise that he cares for them as much as he ever has for anyone.  
  
After a long minute of staring anywhere but at the men in his bed, Roque can practically feel Cougar’s smirk as hands reach out to tease him out of his tense edges and back into a sprawl on the mattress.  
  
“Doable,” Jensen purrs,” Definitely doable.”  
  
“ _Idiota_ ,” Cougar adds and he glares at them for good measure before going easily enough into the shapes and positions, the spaces that they’ve made for him.  
  
And if his hands are a little gentler on the morning of their first flight as dead men, he’s just grateful for some of the same touches back. It isn’t often that he’s afraid or even nervous going on mission but something about shiny black boxes and satin pillows just waiting for his head has his nerves on edge. He’s speechless when Jake Jensen tosses him a hoodie that he knows is not his own. It smells like the blond when he shrugs into it and in the dark silence of 30,000 feet, he’ll close his eyes, bury his hands in soft fleece, and pretend that it’s just an instant and not 74,492 heartbeats before his feet touch the earth again.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's assume you've watched the movie often enough to recognize certain specific parts!

The tarmac is hot beneath him and he squirms, struggling to keep still as the heat leeches into the bites and bruises he’d asked for. He spares a glance for Jensen and marvels at the blond’s ability to bullshit. There's the faintest purr of a helicopter in the distance and Roque closes his eyes against the glare of the desert.  
  
“I used to be good at that, right Roque?”  
  
He bites down on a grin and the urge to agree and instead spits, “Shut up,” loving the soft intake from Cougar when he growls, and the way that it makes Jensen’s fingers twitch helplessly. Only the three of them have any idea why Jensen keeps talking instead of following the simple direction from his Captain.  
  
“Thanks, man,” Jensen chirps, straightening those stupid glasses that Roque knows Cougar _loves_ to smear with come; sometimes Roque does it just to listen to Jensen bitch while cleaning his lenses. “Robert De Niro who?”  
  
“Jensen, shut up!”  
  
“You shut up, Roque,” is the retort and Roque’s suddenly glad for the heat as a distraction from the dick making itself known in his pants. Jensen drones on but he’s really only listening to the sound of the hacker’s voice and telling himself that shoving his cock down that _pretty_ throat will only give the game away, when he’s supposed to be dead.  
  
He wants to laugh when Cougar takes out the admittedly attractive EMT that Jensen is trying to chat up before hitting anyone else. He does laugh at Jensen’s incredulous declaration that he’s never seen an EMT so pretty and ribs the hacker mercilessly because he can’t get his own shot in otherwise. Besides, he likes those flustered blushes, as if he hasn’t had his tongue anywhere near the blond’s ass. Repeatedly. Roque likes the way it always makes Jensen’s toes curl. The memory of it so sweet and vaguely naughty is almost enough to occupy him through Pooch’s demonstration of his Blagyver skills and Cougar spray painting the hijacked huey.  
  
It’s when they’re all back in one room again that he gets his chance at Aisha. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Clay’s leadership, it’s just that the man is too often lead by the wrong brain and, revenge or not, Roque refuses to lose anyone to this damned vendetta. The twenty-five kids he knows they all see when the sandman hits are enough. He’s sick of Jensen crying out for a niece that’s thousands of miles away and of Cougar mumbling about _Angelitos_ and wishing for death. They need distance from their dreams and Roque is determined to find it for them. These are _**his**_ men, damnit. Before they’re Clay’s or, godforbid, Aisha’s, they are _his_. He hasn’t let them down yet and he isn’t about to.  
  
He files away Jensen’s “Sounds like my parents” comment for investigation later when they’re sticky and warm and sated, and heads for his bunk with a heavy look for hacker and sniper alike. He’s glad when not even twenty minutes later the door creaks open and twin footfalls pad towards him on the bed. They have no energy for much more than tired kisses and a lackluster handjob that he promises Cougar he’ll finish in the morning, but their hacker just laughs and pulls him against that broad chest. He falls asleep listening to heartbeats that aren’t his.  
  
  
The next morning dawns clear and he watches Jensen at the hot dog cart, knowing that Cougar is watching from above. It all goes smoothly with the helicopter and stealing the truck that is supposed to have Max in it, until it’s all going downhill and he finds himself with Wade’s name on his lips and a burn phone in his hand. He wishes it was a safeword that he was whispering because then this moment could end and maybe he could bring himself to reach for the two men in his bed. But he can’t because he knows that if this goes badly then he’s no better than Clay at keeping them safe. They search for him in sleep but he can’t seem to bear the closeness anymore. There’s something hot and broken, jagged in his chest and it splinters every time he can’t bring himself to reach for Jensen and whenever Cougar looks away.  
  
He tries everything he can think of to warn them away, short of pleading and begging and telling them that he’ll die before he lets them get hurt. He wants to literally _shake_ Jensen when the hacker leaves his fucking gun in the van, to hug the man when he takes a bullet. Roque aches with the need to worship Cougar when he recognizes the knife being used in the first aid job as the second favourite that he’d leant to the sniper earlier, without even needing to think about it. He’s so pathetically grateful that in some way a piece of him is helping to stitch the hacker up that he speaks without thinking, without realising that he fucking _knows_ how this will play out—that the men will follow him like he once followed Clay, before he found something more important than rank and the search for a bigger knife and bigger violence.  
  
“Well, I’m going to the port, ‘kay?”  
  
Jensen and Cougar just stare at him and he feels sick with it, with knowing that if he takes one wrong step they will never forgive him. They’ll never get the chance. He will never get to taste Jensen again or hear Cougar moaning his name. He finds himself missing what he hasn’t lost yet.  
  
When Clay agrees and takes the blame for getting them into this clusterfuck, he wants to crow and heap guilt like bricks to bury the ex-colonel. But he won’t because it’s a useless thing to gloat over when he’ll be just as guilty come sun down tomorrow if this plan goes belly-up.  
  
“Just let me and Clay finish this,” he begs but then Cougar is cocking his gun and Jensen is following like he always does, and Roque feels sick again. When Pooch throws his lot on to a sinking ship, Roque isn’t sure he’ll ever come clean of the blood and guilt-sweat staining his skin. He can’t look at Jensen, at Cougar. He can’t look at these men without wanting to vomit out the truth like it can save him or any of them.  
  
He hates himself for promising what he doesn’t think he’ll be able to deliver when Jensen asks for a password from behind a close warehouse door and Roque growls about violence but sounds like sex. He feels less guilty about hitting Clay over the head with the butt of his gun since he blames the Colonel for his hacker getting shot in the first place, but the promising look in wide, hungry blue eyes and the gasp from Cougar over the comms stays with him as he follows Wade through the docks. He hates knowing that Jensen and Cougar will think that he’s capable of turning on them even for an instant. Which they will if Clay gets to them before he can, because even though he gave Clay all those buzzwords they’d worked out months ago for just such a fucked up occasion, he has a feeling that none of them will trigger the right memories for the Colonel to work it out in time. But Roque’s hands are tied. He’s doing this for his hacker and his sniper, because he can’t see any other way out but a bullet between Max’s eyes.  
  
He finds himself fantasizing as Wade introduces him to the asshole himself. Roque knows just how fucking easy it would be to raise his side arm and _end_ this. But he doesn’t because there are three men at his back with weapons in their holsters and another three scientists that he doesn’t trust. Instead, he bites his tongue and lags behind, finally finding his chance when an oil tanker explodes. Guards are running and a scientist or two might have screamed and wet themselves but Roque is more focused on not getting shot as he throws himself around a shipping container and empties a clip into that damned suit that’s been haunting them across two continents. He’s running before Max’s body hits the ground.  
  
He knows that Wade is on his tail but the Losers are making one hell of a distraction for the soldiers still crawling across the docks and blocking all the escape routes that he can see, aside from a planeful of cash and a prayer to Cougar’s god. When he sees Clay heading towards him, he almost sighs with relief, sure that his Colonel is here and that they will all, mercifully, survive this.  
  
But then he’s ducking bullets and finding himself fighting half-heartedly against the man he’s spent most of his adult life following. Roque doesn’t want to do this—all he wants is to get the fuck out of this place, to put CIA drug money into a trust fund for Jensen’s niece, and to spend a week or longer licking his wounds, and Cougar’s, and Jensen’s, in some motel room hidden away from the world. That’s what he wants, what he wishes he could have, rather than this ever-downward-spiralling clusterfuck of epic proportions.  
  
Instead he can hear the Ducati coming and by the time Wade’s flying like a frozen turkey sent to kill him _very badly_ , he’s scrambling for the back of the plane and the emergency exit a flight attendant probably would have told him about. The shockwave hits before he can draw in a full breath but it slams the back hatch shut behind him and he blacks out as the heat and light licks at him. He has a heartbeat to wish that he could have given voice to some of the gentle, barely formed things in his chest that keep him warm whenever he thinks of Jake Jensen or Carlos Alvarez. At least the impossible shot that got him to this moment tells him that Cougar is alive. He takes heart from that as his eyes squeeze shut and it feels like the air in his lungs catches fire.


	5. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay!

**Cougar.**  
He can still see the instant, still hear Clay’s command ringing in his ears. He can still feel the wind in that split second when the world slowed and he could see Roque’s face through the plane’s windshield. He had wanted to feel anger, to hate the man for betraying them and bringing them to this place. But all he felt then was fear and all he feels now is pain. It’s another soul added to the twenty-five he carries but this one is heavier somehow. This one tears pieces from his heart every time he catches himself turning to say something, every time he remembers how he only drinks coffee that Roque makes for him anymore. He can’t seem to find the proportions the few times he’s woken up first. It never quite tastes right.  
  
He wakes to an empty bed and Jensen not looking at him for one more day in a row. The kitchen is still and dead when he gets there. After a painful, memory-soaked instant that hangs for days, he reaches for green tea bought by mistake. He’s never drinking coffee again. He can’t stand the smell of it anymore.  
  
  
  
 **Jensen.**  
There’s silence in his head. He’s heard this before. He’s heard the faintest hints of it around the edges of the chaos but it’s never come so close. It’s cold when it brushes his skin, when it touches that used to be so warm. He can’t bring himself to reach for Cougar even though he can feel the sniper drowning. He can’t seem to make a sound.  
  
Sometimes he can almost hear Roque telling him to shut up or sweet things whispered against his skin when he wasn’t supposed to be listening. Sometimes he can still hear the sound of fire engulfing the plane. Sometimes he can hear how loudly he’s still screaming but mostly it’s just silence these days.


	6. Chapter 6

He has no idea where he is or what time it is when he comes to. There’s an IV in his wrist and bandages on his face. He takes a breath that makes him cough and spit up smoke, and pulls out the IV line without flinching. It’s easy to sneak out of the hospital even if his left leg is dragging and it feels like his hands will never stop shaking. He steals scrubs that barely fit and shoes that don’t, and looks like a macabre Hallowe’en cross between a mummy and a doctor. He thinks that Jensen might like that.  
  
It takes him too long to hotwire a car but the onboard GPS gets him closer to their other, alternate, back-up safehouse than he could have on foot. Anyway, Roque abandons the thing further away than maybe he should have when the last mile makes his chest ache and his head swim. Pooch finds him leaning against a tree by the back door and he’s almost disgustingly grateful that it’s Pooch.  
  
“You  _bastard_.”  
  
He would be surprised by the venom if he didn’t deserve it; he just rolls his head to stare blearily at his probably _ex_ -teammate with wishes and ashes on his tongue.  
  
“How could you do it?”  
  
“I killed Max.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice and Pooch just stares at him for a heartbeat too long.  
  
“I’m too tired for this shit,” the mechanic says, hauling him to his feet once more. Roque gasps when bone grates and tries to swallow everything in his throat.  
  
“Wait... Fuck, Pooch, wait.” Propped against the tree again doesn’t feel much better but Pooch’s hand is warm and solid against his chest to hold him up. “Are they– Are Cougs and Jensen okay?”  
  
The twisted expression on the other man’s face smooths ever so slightly before Pooch shakes his head ruefully.  
  
“You love them, don’t you?”  
  
Roque gasps and chokes on it, struggling to inhale until his body calms from panic enough for him to grit out, “I  _care_ , does that count?”  
  
Pooch stares at him steadily, before nodding and rolling his eyes. “Then how could you—”  
  
“I  _told_  Clay! I– I gave him the buzzwords. The code. Fuck, I said ‘cutting a deal’ and... and... ‘the big bad wolf’ but he... I thought he got it. I thought... Fuck.”  
  
Those eyes stare at him unblinkingly and he shivers a little as blood from his torn IV-hand drips between his knuckles.  
  
“I’ll explain it all, I promise. Just... Are Carlos and Jake okay? Pooch...”  
  
“C’mon. See for yourself,” is all he gets as Pooch hauls him up and heads into the house. They support each other through the backdoor as the mechanic explains in a low voice why the man who’s been shot in both legs is doing the perimeter sweep with one crutch—something about catatonic snipers and hackers who won’t say a word. He doesn’t ask where Clay and Aisha are; he’s not sure he wants to know.  
  
Pooch leaves him leaning against the doorframe and his shaking fingers slip off the doorknob. The door eventually swings in but the room’s inhabitants don’t look up. He’s suddenly mad because they know better than this—he’s taught them better than this!—but then he notices that instead of coming together, they’re pulling apart. The distance and silence between them makes his chest tighter more than smoke does and he clears his throat, intent on bitching them out for such sloppy defence. One look at Jensen’s grief-wide eyes and Roque can’t remember what he wanted to say.  
  
“Coffee?” he says finally and not having a drop is still worth the surprised laugh he gets and the way Cougar is in his space as few man can boast without missing fingers. “Hey Carlos,” he whispers, searching that face for hatred and cursing the guilt he finds instead.  
  
“Le maté.”  _(I killed you.)_  
  
Roque shakes his head and ignores how it makes him dizzy. Cougar’s neck is warm beneath his palm and that pulse is strong against his skin.  
  
“I’m alive,” he retorts. “You must’ve missed.”  
  
“Cougar doesn’t miss,” Jensen sighs, eyes still bright and likely to spill over any minute. “It’s, like, a statistical impossibility or something.”  
  
Roque grins at the hacker before turning to the cracked-but-not-broken sniper within reach.  
  
“I’m alive, Carlos,” he whispers, split lips forming the words slowly. Cougar’s gaze is heavy on his mouth. “I  _didn’t_  betray you. I wouldn’t.”  
  
If he were any other man, watching that stoic face crumple with pain would have broken his chest open. Roque just braces his hip on the door frame and opens his arms to the distraught sniper. That he gets a hacker as well for the trouble just makes his jangling nerves stand down another inch.  
  
“Now, as touching as this hugfest is,” Roque pants, dizzy, tired, and maybe a little high with relief. “Would somebody get me a fucking seat before I fall over? I’m pretty sure I got blown up today.”  
  
“It was three days ago, and you didn’t even get blown,” Jensen chips in and Roque smiles, rolls his eyes, and smacks the hacker upside the head with a still-shaking hand.  
  
“Idiot,” he grumbles, letting them ease him over to the nearest unmade bed. The keyboard pried from beneath his elbow tells him that it’s Jensen’s and it’s wrong that they have well-defined spaces, now. Before it would have been a jumble of computer pieces, whetstones, and gun-oil rags on the unused bed.  
  
“Don’t think that this is us letting you off,” he’s cautioned—which might have more impact if they aren’t climbing in after him like puppies and pulling the covers up to his chin. “But you look like death on Melba toast, so this is a temporary injunction.”  
  
“Thought it was on a cracker,” Roque mumbles and falls asleep listening to Jensen drone on about colloquialisms or possibly toast, he isn’t quite sure.  
  
  
He wakes the next morning—or it might be afternoon, judging by how fucking stiff he is, and not in any of the good ways—to Clay bursting through the door. He’s so fucking  _over_  Clay exploding in on them, as the idiot wakes his bed partners with the click of his gun’s safety in the silence.  
  
“ _ **No**_ ,” is all Cougar says, lifting his own rifle to draw a bead on Clay. On Roque’s other side, Jensen is flashing the blade Roque had given him in a fit of twisted, anticipated guilt the week before. He’s not entirely sure what day it is but it feels like it’s been a week since the blond had given him a long, puzzled look before kissing him and stowing the blade.  
  
“We let him have his say, Clay,” Jensen grits out and Roque knows that if his injuries weren’t scrambling over each other for his attention, that tone of voice would have had him tenting the sheets; he smothers a dirty chuckle when Cougar shifts ever so slightly beside him.  
  
The battle-worn colonel at the foot of the bed stares at Roque for an eternity before uncocking his sidearm; he doesn’t seem put out when neither Cougar nor Jensen set aside their own weapons.  
  
“I told you,” Roque whispers, already feeling the cough building in his chest and wondering, vaguely, just how much damage he’s done to his lungs. “I fucking  _told_  you, Clay. ‘Big bad wolf’ ringing any bells?”  
  
“I... I don’t...”  
  
“I didn’t hit you that hard.”  
  
Recognition unfolds slowly on that gruff face and Roque almost can’t bear to watch as Clay realises that with one order a teammate, undercover to kill the bastard that no one else could take out, had nearly been killed himself.  
  
“God, Roque...”  
  
“Not now, Colonel,” Jensen says for the breathless man beside him. Clay just nods dumbly and shuts the door behind him. There’s a breath of silence before the hacker is sighing happily and lying back on the mattress. “Well, that went well.”  
  
Cougar snorts and Roque rolls his eyes without anything to add. They’re quiet as the day brightens.  
  
“Hey, uh, Will?”  
  
He can’t help but go still, not even breathing, because the last time someone called him ‘Will’ was before he left home, before ‘William’ became ‘Roque’ and Will let it happen because no one messed with Roque and no one asked him about the scar on his face. He knew that they probably assumed that he got it in a knife fight with some Colombian drug lord’s bodyguard. In that instant he’s willing to tell Jensen the truth behind anything Jake can think of to ask.  
  
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Jensen says softly against his neck and Roque can feel Cougar smiling against the side of his head. He fights a soppy grin of his own and threads his fingers through Jensen’s tousled hair until the hacker is lax with sleep.  
  
“I’ll fuck you tomorrow, Jake,” he murmurs and lets his own eyes drift closed. He likes the way the promise makes Carlos chuckle and shift even closer.  
  
In the morning he’ll wake up too warm and stiff from not moving all night but it’ll be worth it for the way Jensen babbles through fixing breakfast and for Cougar’s soft smile when Roque makes his coffee just right.  
  
 **End.**


End file.
